Amartia's dancing roots are nestled deep in the soil Greek tradition as she has been a Greek folk dancer since childhood. She was part of the award winning Evangelakia Greek folk dance troupe as a teenager and is currently a member of the Pan-Hellenic Golden Coins, also a Greek folk dance troupe.
Amartia's humble belly dancing foundation was laid in 2002 when she started taking lessons at a local gym and fell in love with the rhythm of the music and dance style. She began performing for live audiences in 2004 and has studied with numerous teachers since. She began teaching her own classes in 2004/2005 and hasn't looked back. She has been dancing for nearly five years now.
She has had intensive formal training in the modern American, Egyptian, and Lebanese cabaret styles of belly dance, and continually adds to her dance repertoire by attending specialized workshops. She even manages to sprinkle a little of her Greek folk dance experience on top to give her style some personal flavor.
She has performed at numerous venues - Five Seasons,Sizzling Bombay, Tobacco Center Cafe, Amer's Café, The Gramercy Mansion, and has also performed in a variety of shows, including Rakkasah East and West, Dansations 1, Raks'N Glitter 2, the Virgin Music Festival, and Shimmilicious 1 and 2 shows. She competed in the Jewel of the Nile belly dance pageant (Cherry Hill, NJ), was named Miss Congeniality, and won the Josephine Baker Achievement Award. She was pictured in the jewel of the nile article in the Jan 07 issue of WAMEDA. She is the 2006 third-runner up of the Za-Beth's Viva La Diva Pageant. She also won an award for veil dancing in the Bellydance for Life October Arabian nights show at the Colony South hotel.
Not only is Amartia a talented and passionate performer, she is also an intelligent and gifted research biologist currently working for a local biotechnology company. She received her Masters degree in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of Maryland-Baltimore and has authorship on several peer-reviewed and published scientific journal papers.
